Lemme try to put it another way, because I am suggesting a different way to think about the idea of work, which /also/ was not the dominant way of thinking about things when I was a student. The notion that you go get credentials in order to get a job standing in a spot and doing a thing and get paid is... perhaps fine, for the trades. But, as I mentioned above, the beaten path is saturated, and you will find yourself in what is essentially a lottery system. (Perhaps most of what has changed since 2006 is that the odds of the lottery have gotten worse...)
Alternatively, you can think of yourself as a problem-solver for hire. You might be more or less specialized as a problem solver, but ultimately, you're asking someone to pay you money in exchange for regularly engaging in creative problem solving to make their business/NGO/whatever run better. Plenty of people come out of school or whatever and have no problem solving ability. And some people create more problems than they solve.
How do you prove that you're worth hiring then? With a portfolio of problems that you have successfully solved. How do you get that portfolio? By plugging into some area you're interested in and solving people's concrete problems.